Day 3631: Did Yooooooo Betray Meeeeeee?

Friday:



To Paraphrase an old joke…

He delivers a Green Investment Bank, New Green Deal and cancels the third runway at Heathrow but is he known as Clegg the Green?

He delivers two-and-a-half BILLION quid for deprived school children but is he known as Clegg the Educator?

He delivers a tax cut to every basic rate taxpayer in the country but is he known as Clegg the Generous?

He delivers the AV referendum, an elected House of Lords and a fixed term Parliament but is he known as Clegg the Reformer?

But he screws-up over ONE pledge to the NUS…


The deed is done.

Have a HEART people.

We all LOVED him during the election, and thought he was totally magnificent. So what if it turns out that he CAN walk on water but he gets his SOCKS WET in doing so.

No, I realise it's more SERIOUS than that. For some people, this will be a burnt bridge too far – and a metaphor too mixed – and they won't be able to support Nick any more. And that's sad.

Remember, Nick has still delivered MORE from a Liberal manifesto than ANYONE since Mr Lloyd George, and he's not split the party nearly so badly as the boy David did! Er.

Look, in spite of the meeja's ALL-TOO GLEEFUL expectations of a three-way – or even FOUR-way – split, in the end the Liberal Democrat votes divided almost exactly into ministers who voted to keep their pledge to the Conservatories and backbenchers who voted to keep their pledge to the students.

And now we see why that UNPRINCIPLED OPPORTUNIST Mr Potato Ed put his own brand of student politics above the urgency of the Climate Change summit AND broke a long-standing tradition of which his own Party had taken advantage, when he refused to "pair" any ministers: he wanted to POSE and PREEN that every single Hard Labour MP voted against the rise. How sad that his response to the GROWN UP politics of the Coalition is to become more tribalist and isolationist.

It is typified by the accusation of "BETRAYAL", the worst sin – at least according to Mr Dante – the one that gets you sent to the NINTH and very DEEPEST circle of HELL.

Are we supposed to believe that Captain Clegg is, like LUCIFER, some fallen angel flung splat into uttermost perdition?

It's this constant refrain of "betrayal" that hurts the most. It doesn't hut US – our fluffy skins are thicker than that; I'm not made of ELEPHANT HIDE for nothing! No, it hurts the discussion, it hurts POLITICS. It reduces intelligent debate to the level of the PLAYGROUND: his fault, her fault, his fault, her fault!

And it ignores the fact that HALF of our MPs actually DIDN'T break the pledge; ignores that the rest of the Party has repeatedly restated our support for the policy; and just ignores, for that matter, that when we couldn't deliver on the pledge we KEPT ON FIGHTING for the best possible deal for students in the face of Conservatories who would not let us raise the extra cash to pay and a Labour Party that would rather play SILLY BUGGERS than engage constructively either in Coalition negotiations where they demanded an increase to SEVEN thousand, not SIX, or since when they've suddenly invented graduate tax proposals that would be LESS PROGRESSIVE than the deal WE negotiated.


It's not like the NUS are even keeping their OWN pledge, since their policy is just a RE-BRAND of student loans as a capped graduate tax. And yesterday's Tell-lies-o-graph revealed that, when pushed to the wall, odious little self-serving Labour-crats like Mr Aaron Porter would rather CUT GRANTS TO THE POOREST than have rich little princelings made to contribute more.

But never mind ANY of that!

You want to know who betrayed you? It was all those STUDENTS who said they'd vote Lib Dem and then didn't bother to turn out. If they could have been BOTHERED to "protest" for five minutes at a ballot box then we could have had a dozen more MPs and had the LEVERAGE to block the fees rise.

And it's worth reflecting that students ARE a PRIVILEGED class. For all that they shout the loudest. In all the hullabaloo the voices that AREN'T being heard are the more-than-fifty-percent of people who DON'T get to go to university.

I believe in abolishing tuition fees because I believe in greater OPPORTUNITIES for EVERYONE. And if there's one thing that I've realised in the debate over student fees it's that we haven't thought nearly enough about how to bring the same sort of LIFE-CHANGING opportunity to people OTHER than our most academically gifted. What has happened to our polytechnics? To apprenticeships? To the third of people LEFT BEHIND by Labour?

So we need to start thinking again about post 16/18 education and training and investment in our young people's future. And that is where we should start.

The deed is done. Let's move on. Together.


Captain Clegg asked his fellow MPs to walk through fire with him. So here is a CHEERY video to remind him how THAT works out…

Run VT!


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Day 3629: Now Labour's Opportunism Threatens Climate Change Talks

Wednesday:


Once upon a time, back when HE was Climate Change Secretary, Labour Leader Mr Potato Ed said it would be "profoundly irresponsible" to use one "mistake" as an excuse not to act.

Well, today we learn that he won't let THAT get in the way of EMBARRASSING the Liberal Democrats.

Mr Potato Ed is REFUSING to allow the Liberal Democrat Environment Secretary, Mr Chris Huhney-Monster, a "pair" for the Tuition Fees vote tomorrow. So Mr Huhney-Monster has a choice: come home from the VITAL Climate Change Summit in Cancun OR miss the vote and risk letting the Government LOSE!

This is a MASSIVE breach of protocol by Hard Labour and a really dirty trick by Mr Potato Ed.

"Pairing" is a LONG-STANDING arrangement between Government and Opposition Parties for two MPs, whose votes would otherwise cancel each other out, both to be absent. This allows Government ministers to get on with important business on behalf of the country and in return lets a Labour MP, er, get a night off*.

It's done by a formal agreement between the Whips Offices (which is just one of the reasons you can't "pair" with a rebel on your own side – never mind that if they're wound up enough TO rebel, they're hardly likely to agree to taking a stand by not being there!)

It's been used for TIGHT votes before to allow Hard Labour ministers attend important events such as – not un-coincidentally – the 2004 Higher Education Act (which you MAY recall was a bit of a tight pinch itself with seventy-one Labour rebels opposing, er, the Hard Labour Government manifesto-pledge tripling of tuition fees).

So, with the extra concessions we've won, how close IS the Tuition Fees vote?

Liberal Democrats plus Conservatories make three hundred and fifty-two of the six hundred and fifty MPs in the House of Commons. BUT the five Sinn Fein members do not take their seats, and Mr Speaker Cashcow and his three deputies do not vote either. And Hard Labour have, er, misplaced a seat because Mr Phil Woolas is a CONVICTED LIAR. So at full strength, the Liberal Democrat/Conservatory Coalition has an effective majority of EIGHTY-FOUR.

That means it needs forty-two rebels to bring the Government majority down to nothing.

There are eighteen Liberal Democrat Ministers, and Captain Clegg has announced that they will all vote FOR the Tuition Fees policy. (Or all bar one, if Mr Huhney-Monster can't make it!)

So even if ALL thirty-nine other Liberal Democrats rebel (and they aren't going to - scores on the doors from Mr Paul) PLUS the one or two Conservatory rebels vote against, that's only forty-ONE. And the Government gets a majority of TWO.

And Hard Labour themselves are ALL OVER THE PLACE on the issue of funding for higher education, with only today their Shadow Chancer being arm-twisted into performing a tarmac-melting hand-brake turn on the graduate tax, a policy that will – of course – just put the SAME burden of paying for their education on future graduates, which is why it's been referred to as "infinite tuition fees". So they will ONLY be opposing this rise in order to try and score a mythical point over the Government.


Climate Change is MORE important that Tuition Fees; even the CONSERVATORIES think so, even if Mr Potato Ed clearly doesn't. We can demonstrate we've NOT lost all our principles AND show contempt for Hard Labour's opportunism AND just squeak through!

So personally, I say Mr Huhney-Monster should skip the vote and DAMN THEIR EYES!**




*Yes, unfair. Once in a while even Mr Potato Ed must get an evening engagement too.

**Mr Blackadder says this, so it MUST by okay!
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Day 3627: There SHOULD be a three way split on Tuition Fees… and lots of other issues!

Monday:


There was a lady on the BBC news last night saying that there might be "embarrassment" if the Liberal Democrats voted in different ways on Tuition Fees.

EMBARRASSMENT?

Are YOU embarrassed, Lady from the BBC? Because I'm not.

There are several very complicated and difficult-to-resolve issues in collision here and the Liberal Democrats are obviously and very publically trying to think them through and take opinion onboard. And, unsurprisingly when you ask a bunch of people ELECTED to be independent thinkers, some come to different conclusions.

This is called DEMOCRACY.

But the Lady from the BBC calls it "embarrassment".

I will tell you what is EMBARRASSING. A meeja who are either so ILL-INFORMED (and too LAZY to put themselves right) or so MENDACIOUS (not mentioning any names but she's a senior columnist for the Grauniad who now literally cannot write a column without actively distorting what Captain Clegg really says) that they think "MPs think long and hard about how to vote" is a gaffe rather than a FLUFFING JOB DESCRIPTION.

It seems to me that the MORE complicated and controversial an issue is – I won't say "more important"; in a week when North Korea is bombing South Korea and Iran has a fully functioning nuclear program, get a sense of perspective! – the HARDER the issue, the more political parties are expected to have INSTANT policy and UNANIMOUS agreement.

I mean never mind that Hard Labour don't actually HAVE a policy on this; that the Hard Labour leader, Mr Potato Ed, thinks that we should have a graduate tax and the Hard Labour Shadow Chancer, Mr Johnson and Johnson, thinks anyone who supports a graduate tax is a moron. Like THAT's not embarrassing AT ALL.


Here are just a few of the issues:

We made a promise to vote against any rise in tuition fees.

But we also got a better deal for students by being in the coalition than anyone else was offering.

From a purely pragmatic point of view, the pledge gave us LEVERAGE. The ability to say "this is going to be very painful for us" might not have been enough to get the increase in fees cancelled, but it certainly enabled us to demand a hugely BETTER deal for students than any that was on the table from Conservatories, Labour OR the NUS.

So do we break the pledge or say "get stuffed" to the better deal that we negotiated?

What would be the cost to students of any ALTERNATIVE that might have to be come up with if we DID keep the pledge and vote against?

We COULD vote with Hard Labour on this one – opportunistically, Mr Potato Ed will vote against the Browne report that his own former government commissioned because beating the Coalition is more important to him than having an actual policy – and together we could outvote the Conservatories and stop the rise.

But Master Gideon ISN'T going to find any OTHER money for Higher Education so wouldn't we see MASSIVE cuts in university funding, probably closing a number of departments and cancelling the courses of thousands of students. And what could we do about it? Nothing. Because we'd have surrendered our ability to negotiate on the issue.

So was it better to BREAK the pledge and get a better deal for students or KEEP the pledge and guarantee a worse deal?

And there's a BIGGER PICTURE: what are the consequences for the Coalition if we break the Coalition Agreement on this?

Do we get more good, more Liberal Democrat policies implemented by staying IN the Coalition in spite of this than we could possibly do outside of it? Does that outweigh ENOUGH the COST of breaking the pledge? Or is that just the ENDS justifying the MEANS?

These are DIFFICULT decisions to make and I expect our MPs to MAKE difficult decisions, and I expect them NOT TO ALL MAKE THE SAME DECISIONS.

Contrary to popular opinion – and meeja expectations – they are NOT a row of CABBAGES.


I think we were QUITE RIGHT to make the pledge to oppose any raise in Tuition Fees.

Was it naïve and possibly stupid and certainly bad POLITICS and will we pay a price for breaking the pledge? Yes to all of those things.

But it was also principled and noble and a little bit wonderfully mad and it was the RIGHT THING TO DO.


So I support President Tim Farronheit and former leaders Sir Mr the Merciless and CK1 when they say that they will keep their pledge and vote against any rise in tuition fees.

But I ALSO support Captain Clegg and Mr Dr Vince when they say that they will vote FOR the Coalition policy because they believe that it is the best possible deal they could have got.

And I EVEN support Mr Hugs if he wants to abstain because that is what we agreed in the Coalition Agreement.

I see the contradiction in that. But "Party Unity" is a RUBBISH reason for overriding disagreements when you should argue them out make your case and in the end see how many people you have convinced by taking a vote. That's democracy for you.

And it's NOT an embarrassment.
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Day 3593: These Tuition Fees STILL Don't Add Up!

Tuesday:


This is what it comes down to: where do we find twelve billion pounds?

With slightly under two million students, and fees between six and nine thousand pounds per year, apparently, plus some living allowances, at a BARE MINIMUM that's two million lots of six grand. Twelve billion quid.

Where can we find the cash?

More cuts? Twelve billion pounds is a tenth of the NHS. Or a third of the defence budget. Surely we can't slash more benefits!

So the government has chosen instead to tax students out of their future.

We've GOT to do BETTER than THAT!


Liberal Democrats, I KNOW it is NAUSEATING to be lectured by Hard Labour on this. They gave a manifesto commitment to not introduce fees… and then introduced fees. We don't need lessons from Labour about broken promises.

But it's EVEN WORSE when the two-faced, lying, bandwagon-jumping hypocrites are RIGHT.

They say we should be ashamed and we SHOULD be ASHAMED.

We DID promise to oppose rises in tuition. WE promised to get RID of the cost of tuition. And we SHOULD keep that promise.

The ONLY excuse for breaking our pledge would be if we could do something BETTER, and – even with the 30% worst off students paying LESS under this scheme – this still ISN'T BETTER ENOUGH.


The proposals now revealed by the Coalition for funding higher education are an at-least-doubled fee paid for by a loan repayable once you are earning over twenty-one thousand pounds (£21,000), with an escalating rate of above-inflation interest.

The simple consequence of this is that people earning up to a certain amount – for you standard three-year degree it's probably about thirty-three thousand pounds (£33,000) – will NOT pay off the loan within thirty years: for those people this is simply a GRADUATE TAX of 9% of your earnings over the twenty-one thousand pound (£21,000) threshold.

People earning above that amount will pay higher monthly contributions, but they will pay off the loan, so they won't be paying for the full thirty years, and in consequence will pay less in TOTAL.

You end up paying the MOST if you very-nearly-but-not-quite pay off the loan. So, for the hypothetical "standard" degree (3 years at £6000 a year, i.e. £18,000), people earning roughly £33,000 would JUST pay off the loan with their last repayment, having paid a total of slightly less than thirty thousand pounds (£30,000).

So the system proposed is moderately progressive. Up to a point, the more your earn, the more you pay back in.

The rather IRONIC fact is that INCREASING the fees actually makes the system MORE progressive.

Increasing the fees increases amount up to which you know you're not going to pay the fees off, i.e. increases the number of people for whom the graduate contributions is a straight 9% tax (limited to 30 years).

For example, at £9,000 per year, or £27,000 for a three year course, only people earning more than thirty-EIGHT thousand pounds (£38,000) will finish repaying.

AND people earning less than £33,000 do not pay any more than they would if the fees were £6,000 (because they have the SAME repayments – for them, it's just a bigger amount written off by the government at the end).

So, why stop at £9,000 then, you may ask. Why not make the fees £90,000 and make the scheme progressive all the way up to the few people earning two hundred grand who are the only ones who will ever pay it all back?

The answer to that one is that what the government calls "writing off" actually means repaying what's left of your loan out of general taxation, and this would be setting up yet another ridiculous bill for future taxpayers.

Which of course brings me back to the point.

This is just DISGUISED GOVERNMENT BORROWING, with a hidden TAX RISE on the poor future graduates to cover the repayments.


The MOST SERIOUS FLAW in our model of government spending is that over the last fifty years, we have been taxing fewer and fewer YOUNG people in order to keep spending more and more on health and pensions and care for OLD people!

We've tried increasing taxes; but the spending on the welfare state kept going up.

We've tried cutting everything else; but the spending on the welfare state kept going up.

We've tried borrowing until the government credit card smoulders.

I'm a bit of a HERETIC and I suspect we DO spend more than is good for us on the health service: it's grown from an essential protection to a national comforter, which we cling on to because it's there, making ever more use of overstretched services BECAUSE they are free-at-the-point-of-need when we might just occasionally be able to cope on our own if there wasn't a giant nanny there to make it all better for us.

But a LOT of our health spending is going on making sure that ever more retired baby-boomers have healthy comfortable and very, very LONG retirements in which to enjoy all the property they bought up before house price inflation made it impossible. And we expect a dwindling pool of working age people to pay more and more taxes to fund this.

And now, on top of that, we're expecting them to pay for their OWN education as well as the cost of OUR retirement AND cleaning up OUR mistakes.

It's really not on.


Instead of dumping the problem in the lap of the next generation, we should be addressing the real problems.

Firstly, Labour's dogmatic target of 50% of people to receive a degree has very badly served both students AND universities. Ridiculously academic qualifications are now widely seen as entry-level requirements to the jobs market. Half of the country get into universities; half are marked as failures. Well done, Labour: you've basically succeeded in recreating the 11+ only at 18.

We need to STOP trying to force every young person into the straight-jacket of a degree. 20% would be a more realistic target, and if you went to a state-funded school, you shouldn't have to pay.

But that's NOT a money-saving scheme, because we ALSO need to provide alternative routes, apprenticeships, city & guilds, incentives to employers, so that instead of the Hobson's Choice – degree or not degree, that is the question – people have GENUINE OPPORTUNITY to get into employment be it at 16, 18 or 21.

So we come back to where we started. Where DO we get twelve billion quid?

Well, almost regardless of the question of higher education, we have got to address our national addiction to the NHS and the welfare state before we lose control completely.

And at the same time, we need to look again at unlocking the amount of unproductive WEALTH bound up in property and investments benefiting very few.

And I'm afraid it means taking head on the power of the GREY VOTE. We've got to stop making promises to pensioners and start KEEPING our promises to young people.

Or sooner or later, they may just turn off the life support.

PS:

I should emphasise: all these figures are EXCLUDING the effects of INFLATION, which would make the REAL terms cost of the loan LESS. That is, repaying £100 in a year's time is less onerous than repaying £100 today (suppose you HAD the £100 – if you repay it today it's all gone, if you put it in a back and get a tiy little amount of interenst you will have something left when you repay the £100 in a year). It will – I guess – also affect the starting-to-pay point and thus the amounts repaid as you go along.

Also, these calculations don't work for AVERAGE salaries; there's just no way my simple maths can take account of the way people's salaries grow: e.g. imagine Jane earns £20,000 a year for three years, so pays nothing, but June earns nothing for two years and then £60,000 in the third year, so pays £3,510 in year three even though she's earned the same ON AVERAGE as Jane.

Day 3274: The Liberal Democrats WILL Abolish Tuition Fees

Friday:


File under news that ought not to be news but IS: the Liberal Democrats have re-stated their pledge to abolish tuition fees, the fees imposed on students when Hard Labour broke their promise not to!

Captain Clegg has e-mailed me to say:

I'm writing to let you know some good news about the Liberal Democrat manifesto - good news for students and for everyone who wants a fairer Britain. This week the Party's federal policy committee agreed a way to deliver one of our most important policies, the scrapping of unfair tuition fees. We've developed a plan to phase out tuition fees over the course of the next six years, to ensure this vital policy is affordable even at this time of economic crisis.

This is TERRIFIC news!

We know that under Hard Labour, more and more people's chances in life have been FIXED by the chance of their birth, the accident of CLASS. No wonder Hard Labour are playing the CLASS CARD – THEY are the ones who have re-enforced the Class System of prejudice in favour of the HAVES and against the HAVE NOTS!

Liberal Democrats want to give opportunities to EVERYBODY, and one way is by making sure that anyone, from whatever background, can go to university and is not put off by the thought of a life of perpetual DEBT.

Well done to the FPC and the treasury team for working out a way to get rid of this unfair tax on opportunity!

PS:

Since this means that a commitment to abolish tuition fees will be in the next manifesto, can we expect Mr Mark Littlewood to pay up?

(I confess, I MAY have an interest as Daddy Alex put up a tenner!)



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